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Chapter 29: Just like Ripe Fruit

In Soviet Russia there is a great desire for freedom because they are living in a concentration camp. There is a great desire for freedom of speech because there is no freedom of speech at all; all news media is controlled by the government, all publications are controlled by the government. You cannot publish a book on your own unless it is approved by the communist party. No news can be published unless it is released through the proper channel - even news like the death of Joseph Stalin. They declared it three days afterwards. For three days they kept it a secret; the world believed that he was living. The communist party was first choosing who was going to be in his place, and only then were they going to declare his death. Even death cannot be declared. There is no freedom of anything, so there is great joy in small things and there is great longing for freedom, for individuality.

There is no question of suicide; nobody commits suicide in Soviet Russia. There is nothing like psychoanalysis in Soviet Russia because nobody goes as crazy as they do in California. They cannot afford it, they are poor. These are luxuries: psychoanalysis, all kinds of therapies, primal therapy - and new schools go on producing new theories about how to bring man to his normal state.

Soviet Russia may step back from jumping into a third world war - its people are not suicidal. And the capitalist countries are worried. Their worry is that the more they wait, the more countries will go on becoming communist. If they had gone to war immediately after the revolution in Russia, they would have crushed the Soviet Union without any difficulty; but they waited, and the more they have waited, the more countries have joined the communist camp. Those who have joined are halfway, they have become socialists. Socialism is simply a softer way of being a communist, more polite, more gentlemanly, less shocking; but it is no longer capitalist. Its whole creed is the same as communism, with a simple demarcation - it calls itself democratic.

But I have seen all these democracies - you have seen them with me; none of them are democracies. So it is just a beautiful name.

And the fear of the capitalist countries is that their number goes on lessening; more and more people are turning towards communism. So if they want to have a war, the quicker the better; otherwise, if they wait to the end of this century, only the US will remain alone to fight the world. And then it will be pointless to fight, then their defeat will be certain.

And you can see it every day: the Soviet Union is behaving more humanly, and America is behaving in a more inhuman way.

The Soviet Union has tried for years to come to an agreement on a treaty for the cessation of creating more nuclear weapons. But it was impossible - America would not agree. Finally, the Soviet Union for ten months has not created any nuclear weapons; on its own, alone, without any treaty, it has stopped producing nuclear weapons. This is a tremendously courageous step.

And now America wants to get out of a treaty it has with Russia and the European countries not to produce weapons beyond a certain limit.

America wants to pull out of that treaty, and is saying that it is because Russia is cheating, they are producing more weapons. And Russia is saying, “We are available for any inspection from scientists, from UN experts. We have not produced anything more than is allowed by the treaty.”

The whole of Europe is in an uproar against America for the first time because they can see that this is simply an excuse, you cannot prove it. But America wants to pull out so it can produce more weapons without any limit.